The Case For Scam An Insurance Company By Staging Pitezel's Death

Holmes had been born into a wealthy New Hampshire family and was given the name Herman Webster Mudgett (America’s Serial Killers). “If Mudgett or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating,. Mudgett’s father was especially abusive after he’d been drinking - which was often” (Spikol). However, his father was a wealthy and respected citizen and had been the local postmaster for nearly twenty five years (Taylor). It is surprising an important member of the community was a child abuser. The abuse of his father may be one of the

    During the 1893 Columbian Exposition, H.H. Holmes was one of the first serial killers of America. Holmes would lure his victims into his building which he transformed into his “murder castle.” First he would manipulate his victims by coming off as a

Dr. H. H. Holmes has a passion for murder, and he hides his true personality behind an act of a charming man managing a hotel. Since Holmes uses his creativity to disrupt the lives of innocent people, he brings out the Black City of Chicago. As a result of Holmes’s passion for murder, he has to keep his psychotic talent secret. Only very few people know Holmes’s true lifestyle, and if they do, he kills them. Holmes weaves his way into to his victims’ lives to manipulate them for his personal benefit.. Even though the White City masks some of Chicago’s problems, evil still

Holmes is presented to us as a complex and unique character both in this extract and the whole novella. Within this passage Holmes almost makes a plea in “Give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis”. This suggests to the reader that work, which provides “mental exaltation” is a basis necessity for a man like Holmes. In the opening of the novella, we have seen that Watson is concerned for Holmes’ drug taking which albeit disturbing to a modern day reader, suggests that Holmes is willing to experiment of his own mind. He seems to view everything he does scientifically and as an intellectual exercise and sport.

During the construction of the “Castle” Holmes hired a carpenter named Benjamin Pitezal as his assistant because Holmes deemed him to be unintelligent and easily manipulated due to alcoholism. The victims Holmes prayed on were generally young single woman with no social ties. Holmes used a variety of methods to kill the victims. After killing the individuals; Holmes stripped the corpses of flesh and paid an individual to assemble the bones into skeleton models to sell to medical colleges for money (Wilson & Seaman, 2011). When Holmes failed to pay his debtors he and his assistant went on the run. Holmes was arrested for fraud and bonded out, however while in his jail cell he bragged to another inmate about the insurance fraud who would later reveal the crime and link to the serial killers crimes. The pair moved state to state committing frauds and petty crimes. Holmes convinced Pitezal to fake his own death so the two could collect on a $10,000.00 in another fraudulent life insurance scheme (Schmid, 2006). Holmes turned on his assistant killing not only him, but three of his young children as well. Pitezals wife alerted authorities to her missing children and husband, she was informed the remains of her husband were discovered and the realization of what had occurred with her family was uncovered. Later the

Lastly, Holmes has so much bravado.  As the creditors were swaying to arrest Holmes, “Holmes fled”(Larson 325).  This shows he won’t be a man and face the consequences. He won’t fight back. As Holmes fled, he shows the reader this fake courage and fake dignity.

In the fall of 1889, Holmes meets Benjamin Frelon Pitezel; He had a wife, Carrie and 5 children, Dessie, Alice, Nellie, Howard and infant son Wharton. He came to Chicago after traveling the Midwest for 10 years because he continually failed at keeping a job and he also had been arrested several times for crimes ranging from petty larceny to forgery, he also drank heavily. He was looking for a job and answers an ad for a carpenter for a building being built in Englewod. There he meets H.H. Holmes and they become friends. He becomes Holmes’s

The main character in the story is Sherlock Holmes; he is the hero of the book, a very important factor in a mystery book. The Victorians would have loved this character because he was not a part of the police force; he was a character that could be relied on, when the police force was so corrupt. Holmes’s life was his job, as the reader gets further into the story; they see that Holmes works for personal satisfaction, ’my profession is its own

Holmes’s career as a pharmacist is turning out to be a good job for him. He starts to travel to Minneapolis quite often as there is a girl, Myrta, there he likes and wants to marry. They eventually get married and move back to Chicago. Quickly Myrta becomes jealous because of all the attention Holmes receives from other girls at the pharmacy. Eventually Myrta moves out and lives with her parents. Holmes’s buys land across the

She had fallen in love. His visits had thrilled her, his departures destroyed her. She was perplexed—he had seemed to be conducting a courtship and even urged her to abandon her studies and run with him to Chicago, but now he was gone and his letters came only rarely. She gladly would have left Boston under the flag of marriage, but not under the reckless terms he proposed. He would have made an excellent husband. He was affectionate in ways she rarely encountered men. She missed his warmth and touch.” (201). The description of how Holmes interacts with Minnie is written in a compare and contrast structure. By utilizing this structure, Larson characterizes Holmes as a person that makes everything into a joke or a game. At first he seems to care for someone, but then his true intentions come out and he starts to act like a maniacal person. It turns out that he doesn’t actually care for anyone, despite the strong feelings they seem to have for him. Not only does comparing and contrasting the personalities of Holmes show his true colors, but Larson also organizes Holmes’s personalities into two separate people. This organization only further proves how far Holmes will go to reach his goal. Holmes’s strong want for things to go his way adds emphasis on his reasoning behind his manipulating actions, thus strengthening Larson’s claim.

It is while in jail Holmes confided in a cellmate by the name of Marion Hedgepeth of the plan to defraud the insurance company. Hedgepeth agreed to give Holmes the contact information of a crooked attorney in turn for $500 dollars, promised to be paid once Holmes received the insurance payoff. It was several weeks after this event before Holmes and Pitezel arrived in Philadelphia, where they rented a storefront and posed as a patent dealer. It is here where Holmes murdered Pitezel with chloroform, burning his face, and setting the building on fire in an attempt to make it appear like a chemical laboratory accident. Once the body was discovered, it had to be positively identified by a family member in order for the insurance company to pay the

He had two children, one son and one daughter. He went out of sight for six years after abandoning Clara and his son. He would always somehow come up with some con as to where he was and what he was doing during the time of his victims' deaths. The police had always questioned him, but had never really pinned anything on him. No one wanted to believe that Holmes was an evil master mind. He was so handsome and charismatic. His tall stature and piercing blue eyes made women often swoon at the sight of him. He could also talk anyone into anything at the sound of his voice and the medical, knowledgeable jargon he used. He even got an old lady to give him her husbands pharmacy after his death sometime after he arrived to Chicago. Other sources said that he killed her and inherited the pharmacy without anyone knowing what happened. Either way the old woman should have been happy that such a noble man was running her pharmacy. He was always the perfect assistant, making sure that her money was going towards helping the company in any way. He would even meet up with venders, creating a stable environment for her and her dying husband. He eventually killed her but when others would ask he stated that she had moved to California, but had no forwarding address (Taylor, Troy).

The college he went to was the University of Michigan . Holmes was jealous of the rich kids and he complained about how tuition for college as not cheap. His plan to pay for college tuition was to marry a rich girl and leg her help him pay for tuition. The plan worked, he married a rich girl and his college tuition was easily payed for. He divorced her. He started selling corpses and used them to make false insurance claims. He made $20,000. He used this money to make his castle.

According to the Chicago Tribune, H. H. Holmes is arrested and accused of “life insurance fraud...in the following days revealed the growing, horrifying reality that Holmes wasn’t just a con man: ‘ Murder in the case,’ ‘Hint of dark deeds’... Officials suspected Holmes...killed his partner, Benjamin Pitzel…” (Benzkofer). The Chicago Tribune reveals to the public Holmes for being not just a con man, but a murder as well.

Twice in the movie, we see Holmes disguised and camouflaged. Where and what did he disguise as? What does he call his disguise?